America's Best Beer Cities 2011

Seven craft-brew meccas that are revolutionizing the way we drink hops. In a great way. Plus: the bars, restaurants, and pubs you should visit to really enjoy them.By Evan S. Benn

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Chicago

Chicago

Sure, the bleacher seats at Wrigley Field are still awash in Bud Light, but the Second City's craft-brew scene is overflowing — and still expanding. Across the street from the ballpark, Goose Island's Wrigleyville brewpub pours everything from its easy-drinking Green Line Pale Ale, a new brew, to its knock-you-on-your-ass Bourbon County Stout, which weighs in at 13.5 percent alcohol by volume. In the Wicker Park neighborhood, Piece is worth a visit for its exceptional, New Haven-style pizzas and house-made beers (I dig the award-winning Golden Arm, a German-style kolsch). At the Publican restaurant in the West Loop, Cicerone-certified servers — the equivalent of wine sommeliers — oversee a beer list that includes worldly selections from Belgium, Germany, and France, as well as local options from Chicago's Metropolitan Brewing Co. and Indiana's Three Floyds Brewing Co.

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Denver

Denver

There's a reason that brewers and beer fanatics descend upon Denver each year for the Great American Beer Festival: It's smack-dab in the center of craft-beer country. Despite being in Coors's back yard, brewpubs and beer bars here often pour the very best Colorado has to offer, from New Belgium in Fort Collins to Ska and Steamworks in Durango. Wynkoop Brewing Co. operates Denver's oldest brewpub, established in 1988, which has beers and food to make anyone happy. If you like it hot, try Wynkoop's house-brewed Patty's Chile Beer, a light German-style beer made with Anaheim chiles and smoked Ancho peppers. You also can't go wrong at the Falling Rock Taphouse, located half a block from Coors Field. With more than 75 beers on tap and scores more in bottles, drinking locally isn't the challenge — it's getting through everything that you'll have trouble with.

Chicago

Sure, the bleacher seats at Wrigley Field are still awash in Bud Light, but the Second City's craft-brew scene is overflowing — and still expanding. Across the street from the ballpark, Goose Island's Wrigleyville brewpub pours everything from its easy-drinking Green Line Pale Ale, a new brew, to its knock-you-on-your-ass Bourbon County Stout, which weighs in at 13.5 percent alcohol by volume. In the Wicker Park neighborhood, Piece is worth a visit for its exceptional, New Haven-style pizzas and house-made beers (I dig the award-winning Golden Arm, a German-style kolsch). At the Publican restaurant in the West Loop, Cicerone-certified servers — the equivalent of wine sommeliers — oversee a beer list that includes worldly selections from Belgium, Germany, and France, as well as local options from Chicago's Metropolitan Brewing Co. and Indiana's Three Floyds Brewing Co.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Denver

There's a reason that brewers and beer fanatics descend upon Denver each year for the Great American Beer Festival: It's smack-dab in the center of craft-beer country. Despite being in Coors's back yard, brewpubs and beer bars here often pour the very best Colorado has to offer, from New Belgium in Fort Collins to Ska and Steamworks in Durango. Wynkoop Brewing Co. operates Denver's oldest brewpub, established in 1988, which has beers and food to make anyone happy. If you like it hot, try Wynkoop's house-brewed Patty's Chile Beer, a light German-style beer made with Anaheim chiles and smoked Ancho peppers. You also can't go wrong at the Falling Rock Taphouse, located half a block from Coors Field. With more than 75 beers on tap and scores more in bottles, drinking locally isn't the challenge — it's getting through everything that you'll have trouble with.

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New York

As with so much else that's food-and-drink-related, Manhattan is ahead of the craft-beer curve. Belly up to world-class beer bars like the Blind Tiger in the West Village or Rattle N Hum in Murray Hill, and you could spend days working your way through their extensive selections of drafts, bottles, and cask-conditioned ales. And it isn't just for beer snobs — foodies are getting in on the act, too: Mario Batali's new Eataly emporium stocks primo Italian brews such as Birra Del Borgo and Birrificio Le Baladina. And Danny Meyer's Eleven Madison Park recently upgraded its beer list, which now provides craft-heads with pages upon pages of choices, from $8 drafts of Brooklyn Brewery to slightly less attainable $100-plus gems in large-format bottles from Switzerland's Brasserie Des Franches-Montagnes.

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Philadelphia

By this point, Philly has probably earned its self-proclaimed title as America's best beer-drinking city. Founded in 2008, the hugely popular Philly Beer Week — which runs June 3-12 this year — is an awe-inspiring ode to craft brew, chock full of beer dinners, tastings, and pub crawls. You can bet this year's beer-week events will include the new City Tap House, where you can pick up a pint of hometown favorite Victory Prima Pils (to my taste buds, the best pilsner in the nation). Plus, thanks to Philly's proximity to Delaware, the city is always stocked with fresh Dogfish Head brews. All that great beer won't go to waste: You'll need something to wash down the hoagies and pretzels.

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Portland

Forget best beer towns in this country — Portland, Oregon, holds its own internationally. The Rose City is home to more breweries than any other city on the planet. And anyone who's ever spent time in this Northwest area knows it's about quality, not quantity. Central Oregon's Deschutes Brewery opened its Portland Pub in 2008, serving good grub along with its top-notch Black Butte Porter, barrel-aged Abyss imperial stout, and other geeked-out brews. In the last weekend of July, Downtown's Waterfront Park hosts the annual Oregon Brewers Festival, now in its twenty-fourth year. Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. helped put Portland's beer scene — and, for that matter, craft beer in general — on the map when it unveiled its American-style hefeweizen in the 1980s. You can find that hefe and about a dozen other Widmer beers on tap at the Gasthaus Pub, across the street from the brewery.

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St. Louis

In the shadow of the largest brewery in Anheuser-Busch InBev's multinational Budweiser empire, St. Louis's tiny craft breweries are the ones churning out the Gateway City's most flavorful beers. At last count, a dozen breweries and brewpubs were operating within 40 minutes of downtown, and two new production breweries are poised to open by this summer. All of them will get together in June for the annual Brewers Heritage Festival in Forest Park, which includes beers from A-B and local craft breweries as well as the area's most talented home-brewers. In-the-know beer lovers, meanwhile, flock to the Schlafly Tap Room, where the St. Louis Brewery puts its freshest beers on draft (cask-conditioned American Pale Ale is a perfect match for the city's best fish and chips). Two International Tap House locations are all about beer, including 50 on draft and hundreds more in bottles (there's no food, but customers are free to bring in their own eats or order delivery). This Bud's for you? Not anymore.

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San Diego

Sprawling San Diego County is dotted with some of the most innovative and respected craft breweries in America: Stone, Green Flash, Ballast Point, Lost Abbey — the list goes on. Tour them all, if you can find time in your schedule and space in your stomach. You can find a dizzying variety of on-tap beers from those places as well as excellent in-house brews at the local brewpub Pizza Port, which opened a location in San Diego's Ocean Beach community last year. About 30 miles north, in Escondido, is Stone Brewing Co.'s World Bistro & Gardens, which features impressive and thoughtful food items (think BBQ duck tacos) to pair with more than 30 draft beers and dozens of bottles from up the street and around the world. Then maybe you can go to the beach.